Starring Laura La Plante and Neil Hamilton
Produced by Universal Pictures
It's rehearsal time for a chorus line. The girls stretch and then move into a rhythmic Rockettes-like kick line. The director's eyes fix on Evelyn Todd. He stops the dance and asks her to demonstrate the steps. She is thrilled with the attention until the director warns the other dancers that if they dance like Evelyn, they'll be fired too.
Rejected and despondent, Evelyn agrees to go to a party with her friend Bunny. Evelyn gets a little tipsy and proves to be a little too unreserved for the likes of Judge Harrington. Bunny trades dates with her friend, and Evelyn ends up with the party's host Guy Emory.
After "accidentally" spilling a drink on his new date, Emory takes Evelyn up to his room to change. There, he "accidentally" drops her dress out the window. Evelyn seems to give into Guy's advances, but then punches him in the nose and hightails it out of there.
She races home in a stolen jacket to find she has been evicted from her apartment and all of her belongings thrown in a heap on the sidewalk. Dejected, she sits on one of the chairs as a rainstorm hits. A passing auto throws mud all over her.
However, things are not as bad as they seem. The car slows to a halt and a man jumps out the back. He cleans her off and offers to drive her somewhere to spend the night. When Evelyn is hesitant to leave her possessions, he hails three additional cabs and loads her stuff into them.
After sleeping in the cab and waking to find they cannot afford the fare, the couple are unceremoniously dumped in the countryside. The incident causes the two to fall in love and they marry.
However, Evelyn's new husband Peter is the nephew of Judge Harrington and the well-to-do patriarch is none too pleased about welcoming a chorus girl into the family. Will Peter and Evelyn's love stay strong? And can the woman outwit the domineering Judge?
Sometimes you go into a film wanting to be challenged. Wanting to see the world in a new way. Wanting to learn something you never knew before.
And sometimes you want something breezy and fun like The Love Trap.
The film has all of the heft of a helium balloon, but it's so much fun you don't mind staying with these characters for an hour or so.
Much of the credit here goes to Laura La Plante's Evelyn and Neil Hamilton's Peter. They only have a few moments to make you believe that they fall in love, but their meet-cute works. Peter's clearly gallant and head-over-heels, but Evelyn maintains a healthy skepticism right up until her white knight battles the cab drivers for her. You see why she falls for him and falls hard.
The third act is a nice reversal of Evelyn's early predicament with Emory. Judge Harrington is just the right amount of befuddled to sell the comedy. And the way Peter resolves it all is smart and in keeping with every one's character.
One interesting element of the film is the shift two-thirds of the way through from silent to talkie. It's a subtle shift (there were not a lot of title cards throughout the silent portion), and one I didn't think much about until after it was over.
Although the switch is not overly shocking, it does affect La Plante's performance. During the silent portions, you can clearly tell what she is saying by reading her lips. Once the sound is turned on for the third act, she continues to over-enunciate every word as she did through the earlier, silent scenes.
I generally like compressing scripts into their most basic elements, but here they went perhaps a too minimal. It would have been nice to see a bit more of Evelyn and Peter's courtship and wedding. It's honestly not necessary for the story, but I enjoyed them as a couple so much it would have been nice to spend a little more time with them.
The Love Trap is a fun, funny romantic comedy that could have stood to have a bit longer second act. It won't change the world and isn't essential viewing, but if you're looking for a light, cotton candy confection of a film, it's a great choice.
**** out of *****
NOTE: I said this in my earlier review of America, but it bears repeating: Neil Hamilton would go on to play Commissioner Gordon in the 1960s Batman television series.
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